In a typical cellular wireless network, an area is divided geographically into a number of coverage areas, such as cells and sectors, each defined by a radio frequency (RF) radiation pattern from a respective base station. Within each coverage area, the base station's RF radiation pattern provides one or more wireless links, each on a corresponding carrier, over which mobile stations may communicate with the cellular wireless network. In turn, the cellular wireless network may provide connectivity with one or more other networks, such as the public switched telephone network (PSTN) or the Internet.
In many protocols, a mobile station communicates with the cellular wireless network over only a single wireless link at any given time. For various reasons, the mobile station or the cellular wireless network may then initiate a “handover” of the communication from a current wireless link to a new wireless link. In turn, the mobile station and the access network may work together to hand over the communication from the current wireless link to the new wireless link. In this respect, the mobile station typically selects the new wireless link based on the limited information available to it, which is typically channel quality of available wireless links. While this procedure generally works well to facilitate seamless service of the mobile station as it moves between wireless coverage areas, an improved handover procedure that accounts for both channel quality and loading on the available wireless links is desired.